Bumbletail
The beginning of the therozoic era marked a new beginning for many clades around the earth with the subsequent extinction in the late Cenozoic (144 million years after humanity) has given way to an explosion of life that began to fill the void left and retake the great number of niches available. Of course, with the start of the reconstruction of the world also the biological relationships between animals and plants reemerged. With such catastrophe many types of pollinating animals along with related plants perished by the great ecological disturbances, however, some of them survived and returned to restore such behavior, mainly by insects such as Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera. However, by vertebrates such as birds or small mammals, long time that several of the groups that were mainly pollinators and nectarivorous became extinct, and even despite having been subsequently replaced by new variants of other groups, these could not fight the great extinction and disappeared definitively. The tops of the trees during the Haemonova period, more than 166 million years after humanity have been colonized by an interesting variety of new arboreal creatures, part descendants of the few surviving mammals, even various birds, and with great prominence the descendants of crocodiles known as Caenocrura, and quite an active group derived from crocodiles that had appeared before the catastrophe of the Cenozoic, who survived and managed to take advantage the disappearance of several of its competitors. There are both carnivores such as folivores and frugivorous, and several insectivorous, however, only a small kind of them has managed to adopt a completely nectarivorous diet and become one of the first vectors of pollination vertebrate for flowering plants of this era, a singular arboreal quadruped, the Bumbletail (Apigatoris himenopodus). This small gliding crocodylomorph is one of several forms derived from the Caenocrura, of the suborder Auspictidae but who did not develop the real flight, this species have a measure of about 15 cm long and with a weight of 160-180 grams. This species live around the coasts of North America, which with the warm global climate, has led to the expansion of tropical forests in much of the territory. They are covered with hair-like filamentary structures, which play a thermoregulatory function, keeping the body temperature constant. The color on top is a dark beige hue, with some patterns of a lighter shade in the patagium, while in the bottom is completely white. Its most prominent feature is the long beak-shaped jaw, almost devoid of teeth at the tip but with a little amount of them in the back. The reason for the hypertrophied beak is for the eating habits, as similar to the extinct hummingbirds they used to get the nectar that is located within the flowers; it feeds on a wide variety, but has a preference for a type of tree with pink /purple color flowers. For the required amount of nectar, the Bumbletail visit about 200 to 400 flowers on a single day. At the top of the beak, near the nostrils, are located a couple of specialized “hairs” which can trap the pollen, and thus transport it to pollinate other flowers. In its tail, have a group of long keratinous plates projecting along the top, and depending on gender, varies the color: females have yellow plates, while males have strong orange plates. Most of the time are solitary animals just getting together in small groups around the trees when are feeding, however they are able to maintain a monogamy relationship where both male and female remain together for the rest of their life. The female always choose the male, and the males to achieve be chosen by the female, this should make a kind of ritual dance which involves moving the legs and the tail, specially highlight its orange plates. If the male remains constant until he convinces the female, she would choose him to procreate and stay permanently as a couple; this is hard because these dances would last for hours and would involve more males which are around the female at the same time. In the given case one of them dies, automatically they return to seek a new partner. Like any other archosaurs, they lay eggs; they have to create nests near the highest part of the trees where the female lays about four to six eggs, which incubate for a period of 50 days. At birth the chicks stay for about a month in the care of the parents, being fed a based on insects and predigested nectar. It takes less than a couple of months to completely abandon the nest and at 4 years sexually mature, and has a life expectancy of around 25 years. Dragonthunders Category:The Future Is Wild Category:Reptiles Category:Crocodiles Category:Flying Animals